Telehealth taking leaps forward to becoming mainstream service

Telehealth may be the cutting edge of medecine, but continual review is necessary to ensure the quality and consistency of delivery of telehealth services across the country.Speaking in Toronto at the annual meeting of the Canadian Home Care Association, Luba Shumsky, lead for international-national markets at Ottawa-based Canadian Council for Health Services Accreditation (CCHSA), said that telehealth is increasingly important in Canadian healthcare and is a viable method of healthcare service delivery, communication, and transfer of information. CCHSA created an advisory committee of experts, including front-line workers, researchers, academics, and policy makers, to help develop a framework of guidelines that would eventually become a national set of accreditation standards for telehealth, explained Shumsky. Dubbed the National Initiative for Telehealth (NIFTE) Framework of Guidelines, the telehealth standards are now referred to as telehealth supplementary criteria.CCHSA also developed pilot projects at four sites as a means of garnering feedback from healthcare system stakeholders on the telehealth standards criteria. The four sites were Capital Health in Edmonton, Stanton Territorial Health Authority in Yellowknife, the Royal Ottawa Hospital in Ottawa, and Hôpital Sainte-Justine in Montreal. Canada Health Infoway has been a strategic investor in CCHSA’s initiative to develop accreditation standards in telehealth by funding the pilot projects, noted Shumsky.The CCHSA accreditation process involves four core standards including leaderships and partnerships, human resources, environment, and information management. The accreditation process also incorporates service delivery standards.Once input from the advisory committee and feedback from participants in the pilot projects had been received, the telehealth supplementary criteria became integrated in CCHSA’s accreditation process. Any healthcare facility that offers telehealth services can undergo the accreditation process at no additional cost."We wanted to look at issues such as the physical environment," said Shumsky. "We want to know if there is a training plan to ensure staff are trained and have the skills to work in telehealth services. We want to know if the organization has a human resources plan to ensure the organization has the right supply of trained staff. We want to know if there are resources in place to manage the delivery of telehealth services and to promote telehealth services." The telehealth-specific standards would also address issues of privacy, security, and confidentiality, he added.As with its regular accreditation program, CCHSA will use surveyors on a voluntary basis to assist organizations in assessing telehealth as a component of healthcare delivery. Organizations will receive training specific to CCHSA’s telehealth supplement, software, and survey activities such as tours, client interviews, and the use of technology to conduct components of the survey.Richard Scott, an e-health researcher at the University of Calgary and head of the Canadian Society of Telehealth, welcomed the creation of an accreditation process for the delivery of telehealth services as a sign that it’s becoming an integral part of health care."We do accredit hospitals and other aspects of the activities that they undertake," says Dr. Scott, in an interview with Network Letter. "It becomes natural that we would focus on telehealth and make sure we have accreditation standards for them as well."The existence of an accreditation process will assist in the integration of telehealth activities in the overall delivery of health care, says Scott. He notes accreditation would ensure that staff, resources, capital, and training is dedicated to the delivery of telehealth."We are moving away from telehealth being projects, which has been done for many years," says Scott, who was a member of CCHSA’s advisory committee, formed to develop the telehealth supplementary criteria. "Telehealth is now sufficiently mature that we are moving to programs," he explains. "If it is a program and the regular way of doing business, there is a need to make sure that whatever is required is recognized and that guidance is given to ensure the program is run in a satisfactory manner."

Telehealth taking leaps forward to becoming mainstream service

News | February 16, 2007

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